I am a mental health nurse practitioner, author, researcher and educator living in Sydney, NSW, where I work as an Associate Professor in Mental Health with the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedicine at the Australian Catholic University in North Sydney, NSW, Australia. After studying theology and church history early in my career, I spent two decades working in mental healthcare with a focus on assisting people to overcome homelessness and other social challenges. During that time, I reflected on how difficult life can be. Not only are the communities and economies we live in often dominated by competition, greed and corruption, but throughout history and around the world, people regularly face phenomena such as disease, war, famine, natural disasters and interpersonal trauma of all sorts.
With such challenges in mind, my writing, research and teaching focuses on mental healthcare and history. I am particularly interested in the history of narratives individuals and communities use to help ourselves cope with the challenges and suffering that life inevitably brings. With such themes in mind, I’m please to announce the upcoming release of my second book, co authored by Claire Chang.
AVAILABLE SOON
MADNESS THEN & NOW
THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA’S SECOND LUNATIC ASYLUM IN LIVERPOOL AND ITS LEGACY FOR MODERN MENTAL HEALTHCARE
By Toby Raeburn & Claire Chang
Modern society is in ‘mental health crisis’. And mental healthcare systems around the world struggle to effectively support those most in need. What can Australia’s colonial history offer in addressing one of the most pressing issues of our times?
Madness Then and Now explores just that—resurrecting the long-neglected history of Australia’s second lunatic asylum, which operated in Liverpool in NSW from 1826 to 1839. Raeburn and Chang bring back to life the untold stories of those who established, worked, lived in, and influenced the Ayslum and the surrounding social, political, religious, and biomedical context of the time.
What emerges from this dive into the formation and functioning of Liverpool Lunatic Asylum is greater clarity on how Australia’s foundations—filled with colonial violence, convict origins, religious influence, military governance, and emerging nineteenth century psychiatric science—echoes in our modern mental healthcare system.
In offering perspective from a historical vantage point, Madness Then and Now, prompts us to pause and reflect on the historical foundations of our modern mental healthcare system, posing new questions about how mental healthcare services might be improved moving forward.
To register your interest please email me at toby.raeburn@acu.edu.au
tobyraeburn.com 